Temur Energy: Rise of The Thopters!

I’ve got something pretty special for you today, a sweet brew by two friends from my LGS. This Standard legal list is almost entirely rotation proof, an alteration of what is already a top tier deck and even has an infinite combo added to the mix. Welcome to Temur Energy: Rise of The Thopters!

Before getting into the deck and all the sweet greatness contained within, credit must go to Paul Grimley and Dylan Murray. These guys play out of the same store as myself on a Friday night and are always good fun to compete with, whether I’m playing against hordes of Eldrazi (Paul) or some control concoction (Dylan). This rather delicious combo does take some setting up but can go off around turn four or five if all goes perfectly. But the deck itself benefits from the already established Temur Energy staple Bristling Hydra to really help you close out the game, meaning we don’t have to rely on all of our combo pieces all of the time.

The combo itself revolves around getting two Decoction Modules and a Panharmonicon on the field. Decoction module creates one Energy Counter whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, Panharmonicon means that this effect will trigger twice, creating two Energy for every creature coming into play. With this in place our Whirler Virtuoso can pay three Energy to create a 1/1 Thopter token, which generates more energy than it cost off of the double Decoction Module/Panharmonicon synergy. Rinse and repeat an arbitrary number of times and you’ve got yourself an unreasonably large swarm!

In this build, even without the full combo assembled we generally create enough Energy to make Bristling Hydra a major threat, saving him from removal by simply having the energy there to activate his ability, getting buff and becoming Hexproof. We can usually count on this guy to close out a game… Hail Hydra!

In addition to this, we supplement our previously mentioned Whirler Virtuoso and Bristling Hydra’s with Rogue Refiner to generate Energy and draw a card plus Glint-Nest Crane to help us find the all-important Artifacts quickly and put a body on the board.

Instants and Sorceries:

3x Magma Spray
4x Censor
3x Glimmer of Genius
4x Attune with Aether

Magma Spray protects from the persistent threat of Scrapheap Scrounger and can effectively remove an early game Relentless Dead, crippling the various Zombie strategies in the meta while Censor offers an early game counter spell and a way to help us get through our deck later when we just don’t have what we need. Glimmer of Genius is a staple in these decks, generating energy and card advantage in our pursuit of combo pieces and Attune with Aether is the obvious turn-one play, ensuring we hit our land drops and manage to get the Energy engine started off in the right way.

Artifact

4x Decoction Module
3x Woodweavers Puzzleknot
3x Panharmonicon

Woodweaver’s Puzzleknot fills out our Artifact package, keeping us ahead on life total and supplementing the Energy theme. This can be vital when you need that three Energy to activate Bristling Hydra’s ability or to create a Thopter and kick-start the combo.

The land package contains Aether Hubs to give our Energy the very desirable property of mana-fixing, fast land in the form of Spirebluff Canal and the only card due to rotate out of standard in Lumbering Falls, the Battle For Zendikar Green/Blue man-land that becomes a 3/3 with Hexproof, providing a blocker or helping us get in for damage.

Our Sideboard could likely do with some tuning but Harnessed Lightning offers us some more removal and Abrade gives us flexibility in the removal, while Supreme Will and Sphinx of the Final Word come in for the control match-up, digging for pieces or flat-out shutting the opponent down.

This deck, while brewed as a fun build to catch people off guard with an onslaught of Thopters surprised many by going 3-1 against a fairly strong field. As expected, the deck does lose to the near optimised form of Temur Energy which survived the Marvel ban but has a good matchup against most of the field. At it’s heart this really is just a fun variation on what is normally an ultra-competitive build in Standard.

I’d encourage everyone to try it out, it was certainly a pleasure to watch and write up. Once you’ve had a go, let me know how it went and what you might change to optimise performance.

If you happen to be in the area of Arbroath, Scotland stop in at Abbey Video Games on a Friday night for some Magic and good laughs! You can find the store online at https://www.facebook.com/Abbeyvideogames/

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